In photofinishing, customer images are printed onto a photographic paper. Conventionally this printing has been optical, using a light source which has passed through a negative to be printed to expose the paper. More recently, it has been suggested that the exposure can be from a digitally captured image, using a CRT, laser or light emitting diode printer. At wholesale photofinishing laboratories, where large numbers of images must be printed in a short time, the paper is normally supplied from a web in the form of a roll mounted within a paper dispensing cassette in a known manner. The paper cassette is light tight when closed for transport to and from the printer, and is typically loaded in a dark room to avoid undesirable fogging of the photographic paper. Photographic paper rolls are typically mounted on cardboard cores which in turn are mounted on an intercore dimensioned to fit on a spindle which is driven by the printer. Rotation of the spindle can control dispensing and uptake of a paper roll. Following exposure, the web is chemically developed in a known manner and then cut to yield paper prints of many individual images which are then supplied to respective customers.
Many different printed image formats are typically provided by a single laboratory. To facilitate printing, similar orders may be batched together. However, depending on the print formats required by particular batches, it may be best to use photographic paper rolls of different widths. Thus, when a photographic paper dispensing cassette is reloaded, it may be reloaded with a paper roll of various widths. To correctly position and hold any of various width rolls within the cassette then, the conventional approach has been to provide many different intercores with flanges spaced apart a distance corresponding to the width of the roll which each is intended to mount. One or more flanges are removable to permit mounting of the roll. Such an approach requires a number of spare intercores for a given cassette, each capable of properly mounting only one roll of a particular width. Alternatively, a series of spacers have been used with a single intercore.
It would be desirable then, to provide a way of mounting photographic paper rolls of various widths in a cassette without requiring multiple sizes of intercores or spacers. Furthermore, since cassettes are typically loaded in a darkroom, any means provided to accomplish this, should be simple to operate by an individual even in a darkroom where visibility is extremely low or nonexistent. It would further be desirable in any such mounting apparatus that there not be a series of loose parts which may be difficult to find and manipulate in a darkroom.